To produce and transfer knowledge in the tourism domain has been since long a priority in the University of Algarve (UAlg). In 2008, CITel (Research Centre in Tourism and Leisure) was the first Centre for the study of tourism, in Portugal. In 2010, CiTeL’s tourism researchers integrated the ‘Tourism and Wellbeing in Society’ group of the CIEO (Research Centre for Spatial and Organizational Dynamics), a multidisciplinary research centre in the domain of Social Sciences, launched in 2007 and funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) having had the classification of Very Good.

CinTurs results from the reorientation of CIEO (Research Centre for Spatial and Organizational Dynamics) for the study of Tourism, in 2018.

Given our scientific heritage and the characteristics of our region as main Portuguese destination, the mission of CinTurs is to strengthen its position as international reference in the study of Tourism, with the specific objective of developing research in 3 main areas:

Indeed, tourism is a global phenomenon and current tourism research privileges the development of a holistic scientific body of knowledge towards the sustainable development of tourism destinations and their stakeholders’ well-being. In this way, CinTurs is in line with the EU priority investigation themes for 2020, related to “Climate action, environment, resource efficiency & raw materials” and “Health, demographic change & wellbeing”. This paradigm in tourism studies reinforces the need of inter and multidisciplinary studies involving other sciences, since ever present in our Centre, and that impact the development of Tourism, such as Environmental Sciences, Economics, Management, Sociology and Psychology.